The Rhythm of the Universe: The Chaotic Meditation of Spiritual Jazz
Since its inception, jazz has had an attitude of defiance toward musical and social conventions. From its earliest days in New Orleans, jazz represented a unique fusion of African rhythms, blues expressions, and European harmonic structures, refusing to be categorised within established Western musical traditions. From the complex musical language of the 1940s bebop revolution to the movements of cool jazz and hard bop, jazz has always followed a fluid path. With the modal jazz approach exemplified in Miles Davis’s 1959 Kind of Blue, jazz began to free itself from traditional forms.
The 1960s: Social Transformation and Musical Liberation
Musicians’ search for greater freedom and creativity in jazz evolved in parallel with broader social movements in the United States that rejected oppressive societal structures. The 1960s marked one of the most transformative eras in American history. The Civil Rights Movement challenged ongoing racial discrimination and segregation, and jazz, which grew out of Black social clubs, had for years been the voice of building something together against oppression. Indeed, the music had never chosen any path other than being the voice of resistance.
When artists like John Coltrane and Sun Ra pushed beyond conventional harmony and rhythm during the height of the civil rights struggles, they created a sonic representation of liberation that resonated with political emancipation movements. With his groundbreaking 1959 album The Shape of Jazz to Come and the genre-defining Free Jazz in 1960, Ornette Coleman led the charge in dismantling traditional musical structures. These artists crafted the soundscape of the freedom they sought in society. In this new form of jazz, a space opened up for unpredictability and, eventually, chaos.
As music writer Andy Beta notes, “amid the disorder out on the street and on the bandstand was also a quest for a spiritual center, a search for communion with the divine.” Through embracing energetic improvisation along with dissonances, musicians later built a bridge to entirely new pursuits that would be called spiritual or astral jazz. In a society that marginalised African Americans through white-dominant cultural norms, it was only natural for Black musicians to seek alternative cultural expressions and pursue both personal and collective liberation.
The Legacy of Coltrane
Spiritual jazz, rather than being a single musical genre that emerged in the late 60s as a reaction to authoritarian social structures, became an expression of the inner attitude from which the music was born. It manifested in many forms—free jazz, avant-garde, modal jazz, or combinations of all three. At its core, it can be seen as an entry into John Coltrane’s world of mystical musical searching. His 1965 album A Love Supreme, often hailed as one of the greatest jazz records of all time, marked a pivotal moment. Released on the Impulse! label, the four-part musical suite ‘Acknowledgement,’ ‘Resolution,’ ‘Pursuance,’ and ‘Psalm’ was a deeply personal expression of Coltrane’s spiritual journey. As he explored Hinduism, Sufism, African history, and the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, later albums like Om (1967), Meditations (1966), and Ascension (1966) infused his music with transcendental and spiritual themes, opening up a new world of discovery for jazz.
Musical Expressions of Spiritual Quest
Coltrane’s death left a spiritual and creative void that was later filled by his wife, Alice Coltrane, and saxophonist Pharoah Sanders—both members of his final ensemble. After a period of mourning, pianist Alice Coltrane stepped forward as a leading figure of spiritual jazz. She turned toward Eastern religions, dedicating her album Journey in Satchidananda to her Hindu guru. She fused spiritual jazz with Indian classical music, incorporating non-Western instruments like tanpura, oud, and harp, the latter of which quickly became her signature sound. In their personal lives, the Coltranes sought salvation in spirituality. When they spoke of God, they referred not to a deity of any one religion but to a universal spiritual presence encompassing all world faiths. Naturally, this spiritual pursuit permeated their work.
Artists like Sanders, Archie Shepp, and Don Cherry followed similar paths, blending the intensity of free jazz with motifs from African and Indian music to reach transcendental states. Sanders expanded Coltrane’s universalist sound with his now-iconic track The Creator Has a Master Plan, recorded in Tokyo for the Karma album. Through richly textured improvisations and African and Eastern percussion, they envisioned a universal consciousness where limitations dissolved.
Collective Consciousness and Cosmic Harmony
What makes jazz and African music common and so unique is that, at its core, each musician is concerned with a specific rhythm that contributes to the whole, thus producing multi-faceted rhythms or polyrhythms. Spiritual jazz breathes into the soul precisely this way – that to become one, one must understand and realize the power of being individual. It is built on community. Without it, spiritual jazz cannot exist. Sun Ra and his Arkestra—an essential part of this genre—functioned as a communal living and creative unit.
Their performances were immersive experiences with futuristic costumes, dance, poetry, and audience participation. Arkestra and Sun Ra’s modified electronic instruments broke the barrier between performer and listener, individual and collective experience.
The Afrofuturist artist who believed that Black people would never find peace on Earth and needed to live on other planets developed an entire cosmic philosophy that combined Egyptology, science fiction, and radical Black politics. In short, he attempted to show and bring to life a utopia for his people.
Contemporary Echoes of Spiritual Jazz
“The most spiritual music in the ancient African days was the music that made you move,” says musician Plunky. Just as in the 1960s, artists today do not separate their work from the social struggles of their time. Spiritual jazz found renewed relevance with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, which protested police violence against Black communities. The movement provided a platform for the genre to amplify its themes of collective liberation, resistance, and Black consciousness. Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 avant-rap album To Pimp a Butterfly, featuring the protest anthem Alright, embraced free jazz elements. Just two months later, saxophonist Kamasi Washington, a major contributor to Lamar’s album, released The Epic—his own spiritual jazz manifesto. Deeply influenced by Alice Coltrane’s musical journey, Washington and other contemporary artists associated their music with this resistance and aimed to heal a new generation struggling against ongoing oppressions.
Music critic Joe Muggs notes that spiritual jazz was “always an approach, not a sound, and that approach was incredibly diverse. It could be dreamy and meditative or a flood of free-form cacophony.” Today’s artists draw on a wide spectrum of rhythms—from African traditions to electronic production—to explore that diversity. Honoring the experimental spirit of the past, they create more accessible entry points to spiritual jazz by blending familiar genres, expanding its reach and impact.
One example is Shabaka Hutchings, who along with names like Nubya Garcia and Moses Boyd is among the contemporary spiritual representatives of the United Kingdom jazz scene, came together last year with English electronic music producer Sam Shepherd (Floating Points), who had previously collaborated with Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra for the album Promises (2021).
His band Sons of Kemet’s album Your Queen Is a Reptile (2018) boldly addressed colonialism and racial inequality, weaving Caribbean rhythms, African influences, and free jazz. Hutchings’s other projects similarly explore cosmic and spiritual dimensions. Even if you’ve never heard their names, these artists have the power to take you to places you’ve never been.
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